Real Madrid Drops Gareth Bale from Travelling team ahead of Manchester City clash
Wales forward Gareth Bale has been left out of Real Madrid’s 24-man squad for the Champions League last-16 second-leg tie against Manchester City which comes up on the 7th of August which is tomorrow Friday.
Manchester City won the first leg 2-1 and it was played in Spain far back February before the coronavirus pandemic break, the pandemic paused the competition for almost five months. The 31-year-old former Tottenham winger Gareth Bale has only played two games with only one start, in 11 Real Madrid’s games since the restart of football in Spain in June.
The winners of the tie will play either Lyon or Juventus in the quarter-finals. All the games in the Champions League from the last eight onwards will be played in Portugal over a 12-day period from 12 August with the final on 23 August.
Gareth Bale joined Real Madrid at a record fee of £85m from Tottenham in September 2013. He has so far helped the Spanish champions win the Champions League on four different occasions, scoring in the 2014 final against Atletico Madrid, converting a penalty in the shootout against the same side in 2016 and netting twice against Liverpool, including a spectacular bicycle kick, in 2018.
The player linked with a move to the Chinese Super League club Jiangsu Suning in Summer last year with an offer which worth a reported £1m a week. However, the move fell through when Real Madrid demanded a fee for Bale. The forward has only started 14 games in all competitions in 2019-20 season for Real Madrid and looked disinterested in recent weeks, including pretending to be asleep as a substitute as Real went on a 10-game winning run to become Spanish champions.
